Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on October 7, 2005, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
If you’re going to do a romantic drama/horror film in which one of the couple is undead, it helps to make that person as lively as possible before his demise, and that’s just what writer/director David Gebroe does in Zombie Honeymoon. Behind the campy-sounding title is a movie that takes both the “zombie” and the “honeymoon” parts of the title seriously yet also finds the dark humor in its dire situation, and thus manages to find a new wrinkle in what is becoming a very crowded subgenre. (The movie is in the midst of a 10-day run at New York City’s Two Boots Pioneer theater, the first in a series of theatrical engagements.)
The story opens just right, with young couple Denise (Tracy Coogan) and Danny (Graham Sibley) bolting from the church where they’ve just been married, jumping into a car and speeding off. Never mind a formal exit from the ceremony—these kids just wanna have fun. As their beloved psychobilly music plays on the soundtrack, it quickly becomes clear that these two are as passionate about life as they are about each other. They like to curse and drink and fool around, and in a heedless romantic gesture, once they arrive at their honeymoon house on the Jersey shore, they both call their jobs and quit in order to make a long-dreamed-of move to Portugal. These two could have come off as obnoxious hedonists in the wrong hands, but Gebroe and his stars make them compulsively likable instead, with real chemistry (no doubt helped by the fact that Coogan and Sibley fell in love for real during the shoot).
Alas, this is fated to be a Zombie Honeymoon after all, and during an outing at the beach, a strange, disfigured man stumbles out of the sea (a nicely chilly, Carnival of Souls-esque moment), tackles Danny to the sand and vomits dark blood all over his face and into his mouth. It’s not long before Danny starts demonstrating the telltale signs of undeadism: peeling skin (dismissed at first as just a sunburn) and a taste for human flesh (not as easily explained). Yet he doesn’t lose his human consciousness; he’s quite aware of the creature he’s becoming, but can’t help himself when the craving for blood overcomes him. That makes the film a grisly tragedy in addition to a gruesome horror tale, as Denise struggles to stand by her man even as he’s becoming a monster.
If you think that sounds similar to David Cronenberg’s The Fly, you’re right, and Gebroe also echoes Dead Alive in a dinner party scene where one of the hosts is likely to have the guests for dessert. Yet Zombie Honeymoon is far from just the sum of a few homages; Gebroe takes the material seriously and keeps the movie rooted in its personal drama. Denise seems to accept the fact of her husband’s monstrous condition a little too easily, but the film works both drama and humor out of her attempts to soldier on with their relationship despite it. In her deepest moment of denial, she insists on going with Danny to pick up their Portugal tickets, an attempt at escape that’s sabotaged when Danny takes a bite out of the travel agent’s arm.
The makeup FX by Joe Macchia are well-realized and flamboyantly gross, yet are the only overstated part of this production. The scope may be limited, but Gebroe doesn’t attempt to impart any more weight upon the material than it can handle. He’s got a simple but not simplistic story to tell, and orients his filmmaking to serve the emotions; there are moments when the dialogue and situations become a tad too outrageous for the straightforward tale surrounding them, but the movie builds to a number of seriously unnerving and moving moments in the final reels (particularly one with Denise in bed—you’ll know it when you see it). Zombie Honeymoon is the kind of confident debut that typically has observers looking forward to its maker moving up to bigger and better things—but its affecting human scale suggests that Gebroe won’t have to go much bigger to get even better.
